Your Best Body Ever

7 Oct 2009

Easy Ways to go Veggie!

Following up on my post the other day about Vegetarian Awareness Month, I thought I would write today on a few easy recipes and some other ideas to get you motivated to give up meat for a month. It’s only a month, after all…and I know you can do it.

I realize that it might be pretty hard to give up meat cold turkey (no pun intended, ha!) So to begin with, you’re going to have to plan a little bit. If you’re like me, you can still have your eggs at breakfast, and milk products as well. This is a personal choice, but I find most women don’t get enough calcium so I do try to keep milk in my diet. Eggs are also a great source of protein, and I consider them “pre-meat”, so to speak, although I know a lot of vegetarians won’t eat them. I do try to get organic, free range eggs whenever possible, however.

It’s also important to know that there are several products on the market that mimic meat products. These are generally made out of soy, tempeh, or TVP (textured vegetable protein), and believe me, they’ve come a long way since I became a vegetarian. It’s now possible to get soy bacon, soy hot dogs, and soy chicken fingers that really taste a lot like the real thing. In fact, I have a friend who actually prefers the soy hot dogs to the real thing – he says they taste better! And he’s a die hard meat eater, so that’s a pretty good review.

A few of my favorite vegetarian items include Amy’s Kitchen products, Smart Dogs, Boca Burgers, and Gardenburgers. You can find these at almost any large grocery store chain in the health food aisle and/or the frozen food section. They’re healthy, convenient, and completely delicious.

A few other things you can do to help yourself go “no meat” – when eating out, order certain things without the meat, if it can be. For example, if I see something on the menu that lists bacon (like a salad, for example) I’ll ask for it to be made without it. I’ve even asked for a “cheeseburger without the burger” before! To most meat eaters, a cheese sandwich can sound pretty dull, but topped with some delicious roasted veggies and some yummy sauce, it can be amazing.

This is something you can try at home as well. If a recipe calls for ground meat, search for crumbled TVP instead, and add it in. I often do this with tomato sauce or pasta dishes, as it really does add some flavor and knocks up the protein content a bit.

This is also a great time to try some new recipes. Here’s on of my all time favorites – I’ve been eating this since I was 6 years old, and before I became a vegetarian, and it was my favorite meal then (I guess I was destined to be a veggie!) but it’s a tasty quick meal that you can put together in no time. And despite the skeptical looks from your family, I promise you, they’ll like it.

Tofu Sloppy Joes
1 cup of diced onions
2 garlic cloves, minced
1 14 oz pkg of firm tofu, drained
1 ½ cups of your favorite tomato sauce
4 English muffins, cut in half and lightly toasted
Shredded mozzarella cheese
Grated parmesan cheese
Basil leaves (optional)

First, put your oven on the broil setting. Then, spray a non-stick pan with an oil spray like Pam, or warm up a little olive oil, on medium heat. Cook the onions until they become softer, about 5 minutes, then add the garlic, and cook for another 5 minutes or until they start to brown. Add the tofu, and break up the tofu with a fork in the pan, so the block becomes completely dissolved. Then add the tomato sauce, turn the heat down to low, and cook, covered, for about 15 minutes so the flavors meld together. Toast your English muffins at this time, and place those on a piece of tinfoil on top of a broiler pan or baking sheet. Place a few big spoonfuls of the tofu mixture on each English muffin, enough so they’re covered but not so it’s not falling off too much. Sprinkle on a little bit of the mozzarella and parmesan cheese on each, and top with a basil leave, if using. Place them under the broiler for around a minute, until the cheese melts.


And voila! An easy vegetarian meal everyone will enjoy. If you really want to go hard core, use soy cheese. Yum!

5 Oct 2009

October is Vegetarian Awareness Month!

I bet most of you probably didn’t know this – the month of October is dedicated to celebrating a plant based diet and making people aware about its benefits.

I myself have been mostly a vegetarian for many, many years. I do eat fish, but no poultry or meat. There are different kinds of vegetarian eating, the most common probably being the lacto-ovo vegetarian, which allows milk and egg products into the diet. A total vegan diet doesn’t include any animal products at all, including things like honey. It’s a very strict diet and can be hard to follow, as well as get all your essential nutrients. But it can be done, you just have to work very hard to have a balanced diet.

The benefits of a vegetarian diet are many. Regarding your health, this kind of diet can help reduce your risk of heart disease, strokes, and certain kinds of cancers, as you’re eating less saturated fat and cholesterol. It can also help you lose weight, as you’re mostly consuming lower calorie vegetables and fruits. Studies have also shown that vegetarians live longer than meat eaters, approximately 7 years longer.

But that’s not all. You’ll spend less at the grocery store, as produce costs less than meat. You’ll also protect your bones, as eating meat (and we eat more protein than we should, which I recently wrote about) can leach valuable nutrients from your bones as your body. The average bone loss for a 65 year old vegetarian is about 18 percent, for a meat eater the same age, it’s double that. Pretty amazing, right?

Going vegetarian can also help you avoid toxins in meat, such as hormones and steroids. It will also help you avoid food-borne illnesses, as most of these are found in meat products.

And let’s not forget the benefits to planet Earth! Going veggie helps prevent global warming, as cows, goats, and other animals emit methane, which is a huge destroyer of the ozone layer. Less demand for meat means fewer animals in the world. It also helps prevent deforestation for animal grazing. Water preservation is also affected. One pound of beef requires 2,500 gallons of water, whereas one pound of wheat takes only 25 gallons.

You can also help reduce world famine. Currently, 72 percent of grains grown in the US are fed to animals raised for slaughter. It takes 15 pounds of feed to produce one pound of meat. But if these grains were given directly to the world’s people, famine would all but be eradicated.

So have I convinced you enough yet? And if you’re thinking that a vegetarian diet is bland and boring, think again! There are plenty of wonderful and tasty recipes out there to try, and it’s anything but boring. It’s also a lot easier than you think, as there are a ton of products now available at the grocery store (some even taste like real meat, if you really can’t go without…) and most restaurants also offer vegetarian options.

Tomorrow, I’ll go over some great recipe ideas to get you started. I’m trying to convince my clients at the Diversified Health and Fitness gyms to give up meat for just this month, so I am giving you the same challenge. Think you can do it?